I am going to try to learn more about how this might be a backdoor way for citizens to get their projects jump started. Here is the key graph from an early press release explaining the project:

A $24 million initiative by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will engage community foundations in a grant-making challenge to find creative uses of media and technology to help keep communities informed and their citizens engaged

After you check out the press release be sure to get more background information from my PJNet.org video with Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation.

Here is today’s press release in full:

New Knight Initiative Seeks to Address Local Information Needs Engaging Community Foundations

$24 Million, Five-Year Project Spurs Innovation through Challenge Grants

MIAMI – A $24 million initiative by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will engage community foundations in a grant-making challenge to find creative uses of media and technology to help keep communities informed and their citizens engaged.

The five-year Knight Community Information Challenge is launched as the media world undergoes rapid change and acknowledges that there is less local information readily available. The challenge is premised on two strongly held beliefs: 1) in a democracy, information is essential for a community to function properly; it is a core need, and 2) since community foundations are established to meet core community needs, they are logical partners in meeting the information needs of communities.

This initiative is also seen as an opportunity for community foundations to provide civic leadership.

The Knight initiative has three parts:

• A grant-making program will invite community foundations to propose ideas to meet information needs in their communities. Knight will make $20 million available over five years to match funding for the best of these ideas.
•  Once the winners are chosen, teams of “circuit riders” – specialists who bring access to resources and expertise – will be available to help community foundations address their information-needs opportunities. The teams will help community foundations develop the ability to plan and execute their ideas.
• The project includes a Media Learning Seminar on Feb. 16-17, 2009 to help community foundations learn about the information needs of communities in a democracy. The first such seminar of this kind was held in February 2008 when Knight and the Council on Foundations co-hosted a gathering in Miami. The 2009 seminar will offer an opportunity to exchange current knowledge, review existing information needs projects and share best practices. A companion meeting hosted by the Council on Foundations in October 2009 will reach out to more community foundations.

“Many community foundation executives and board members told us they were ready to embrace information as a core part of their mission,” said Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation president and CEO. “Now it’s time for action. Foundations that value information as an essential element for healthy community advancement – whether neighborhood, town, city or region – will find us a willing partner. By inviting the initiatives to come from the communities, we expect them to be both relevant to local needs and varied.”

The challenge is open to all community foundations. Knight plans to consider ideas from other foundations whose focus is local, geographically defined communities, similar to community foundations.

The Knight Community Information Challenge involves a two-step process. Community foundations can visit www.informationneeds.org to propose a project in 200 words or less between June 30 and Sept. 15. Those selected to submit full proposals will be notified within a week of receipt, and full proposals will be due Oct. 15. Each full proposal will be required to provide matching funds.

The initiative is the fourth in a series of Media Innovation Initiatives created by Knight to address the information needs of communities in a democracy. They include:

• The Knight News Challenge, funding ideas that use digital media to deliver news and information to geographically defined communities (www.newschallenge.org);
• The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, in partnership with the Aspen Institute, will propose public policy that will facilitate meeting those needs (www.knightcomm.org); and
• The Knight Center for Digital Excellence, a nonprofit consultancy, helps communities across the United States ensure digital access for every citizen (www.knightcenter.info).

The Tow Foundation will give $3 million to the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism and $5 million to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

The City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism are expected to announce Monday that they have received multi-million grants from the Tow Foundation to establish new centers for digital media innovation.

CUNY will receive $3 million to establish the Tow Center for Journalistic Innovation, an incubator for new journalistic products and services using Internet technology. CUNY will be required to match those funds via its own fund-raising efforts. …

The foundation will also give $5 million to Columbia, which will be required to match that grant on a two-for-one basis. These funds will be used to establish a center dedicated to the research and teaching of professional journalism in new and emerging media. While the new center’s main mission will be to educate the next generation of journalists and help them develop the skills necessary for online journalism, it will also explore new methods of interactive journalism.

A record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others. And Barack Obama’s backers have an edge in the online political environment.

Here is more:

Led by young voters, Democrats and Obama supporters have taken the lead in their use of online tools for political engagement.

• 74% of wired Obama supporters have gotten political news and information online, compared with 57% of online Clinton supporters.
• In a head-to-head matchup with internet users who support Republican McCain, Obama’s backers are more likely to get political news and information online (65% vs. 56%).
• Obama supporters outpace both Clinton and McCain supporters in their usage of online video, social networking sites and other online campaign activities.

Here is general information about youth, the Internet and mobile devices in this election year: 

Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns…

Young voters are helping to define the online political debate; 12% of online 18-29 year olds have posted their own political commentary or writing to an online newsgroup, website or blog.

And this:

35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos–a figure that nearly triples the reading the Pew Internet Project got in the 2004 race.

Read the full report here.

Here is the essense of the bill SB 59 (georgia-kid-law.pdf ) with Arne’s insert in brackets:

It shall be illegal for the owner or operator of a social networking website [myspace, facebook, linkedin, probably blogger] to allow a minor [under 18] using a protected computer [i.e., one in Georgia] to create or maintain a profile web page on a social networking website without the permission of the minor’s parent or guardian and without providing such parent or guardian access to such profile web page at all times.

First offense is a misdemeanor, second is a felony with imprisonment up to five years.

Of course, as someone who just started a social networking site for SoCon08 to help Georgia businesses, nonprofits and entrepreneurs, it worries the hell out of me.

Here is Arne’s response to what he, at least according to the subject line of this email thinks is a fairly dumb piece of legislation, but his remarks below are more temperate:

I am sending this email to my Senator (Senator Henson) and all the sponsors of SB 59.

I am a concerned parent. I have 4 children, aged 9, 14, 18, and 20. I am deeply concerned about the potential risks to children associated with social media generally.

I am also a partner at the law firm of Morris, Manning and Martin. I started my firm’s “Web 2.0″ practice group. As a part of my job, I study the business models associated with social networking, I have my own MySpace and FaceBook accounts, and I represent clients who are in this business space. (I am not being paid by any of them; this email is sent as a concerned citizen only.) I also speak and write in this area.

Given my parental and professional background, I consider myself one of the more knowledgeable people, over 50 years of age, about social networking.

A few months ago, there was press coverage of sexual predators and MySpace. At that time, it was reported that MySpace had 29,000 sexual predators who had accessed MySpace. Comparing this to the total number of users of MySpace at the time (about 58 million), that means that there was approximately one sexual predator for every 2,000 persons on MySpace. I can understand that this is a serious concern to legislators, parents, and NewsCorp (who owns MySpace).

Also at that time, I checked to see how many sexual predators were in my own county. At the time, I counted 596 sexual predators listed in DeKalb County. DeKalb County’s population is approximately 723,602. This means that in DeKalb County, there is one sexual predator for every 1,214 people.

As you can see, the ratio of the number of sexual predators to the population in DeKalb County is 61% GREATER than the number of sexual predators on MySpace. My kids may be more at risk of sexual predators at school or at the mall than they are on MySpace. While the larger absolute numbers make for sensational headlines, those numbers merely reflect a problem that we have in society.

Businesses are not interested in having sexual predators on their sites, and at least the larger social networking sites are spending massive amounts of money both to prevent sexual predators from using their systems and to catch and prosecute them. I believe that the owners of social networking sites, such as NewsCorp, Disney, Google, and other large, well-funded companies, are a part of the cure.

Second point. I teach my kids how to deal with social networking. I view this as my role as a parent. I don’t need the government telling me or my kids what to do.

I oppose SB 59. This legislation paints with way too broad a brush, and it is very likely to have severe unintended consequences. I don’t think that it is in our State’s best interest to legislate something that has the potential of excluding the State of Georgia from participating equally with other states in the development of social networking generally, which I believe has the potential to be as important as the rise of the Internet itself.

While we have a clear societal problem with sexual predators, social networking is the only area I know where the resources of businesses have been marshaled to help solve this societal problem. The risks of social networking simply aren’t sufficiently different from this problem in our society at large to justify passing an overly simplistic,potentially damaging (to businesses and the cause of reducing sexual predation), and, in my opinion, poorly thought through legislation.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Paul Arne

He thinks anyone interested in social networking should be contacting their legislators too.

Time Warner’s CNN this week will enter YouTube territory with the launch of iReport.com, a new Web site built entirely on user-produced news. And unlike CNN’s own properties—where only iReport submissions that have been handpicked by editors and checked for accuracy ever make it online or on air—the new site will be wide open, allowing users to post whatever content they choose, CNN said….

Here is more:  

“The community will decide what the news is,” said Susan Grant, executive vp of CNN News Services. “We are not going to discourage or encourage anything…iReport will be completely unvetted.” (CNN will, however, monitor the site for objectionable content.)

Last time I looked at Flickr there were about 300 photos posted about the event. Look through them closely. As you do, be sure to watch the slide show of the black and white photos by Tikigod, who is, in fact, Nik Wilets. Wilets, whose self portrait is on this post, now specializes in interactive media and design at Morris DigitalWorks™ ; however, he has a degree in photojournalism and worked as photojournalist in the past.

Over all the years I was a magzine editor, I found that meeting photos were often boring, except probably to the people attending the meeting. However, that might have been because the photojournalists shooting them were bored or weren’t much better than the amateurs, at least, on an artistic level.

Now that takes us back to SoCon08. Look at Wilets photos are they better than the others? Is black and white a lost art that should be revived? If you were a photo editor and Wilets was on your staff, would you send him to the meeting or just let the conference attendees fire away and you take the best of what they shoot?

Is there be much of a future for photojournalists? Should newspaper or web editors be hiring more photojournalists or fewer?  Or should they be hiring fewer photojournalists, but better ones? Or should they use their money to hire people who write, shoot photos and do video, even if there might be a trade off in quality in one of those areas? Would there be a trade off in quality?

Our SoCon08 has been fortunate because we are, in part, about citizen media. So we are getting some of the best of the amateurs to shoot for us. Still would that be enough if you were a news site? If you were starting a web news organization today, what role would photos and great photographers have in it?

I know my answers. I would try to hire as many great shooters like Wilets as I could and knock the socks of my viewers each morning, no matter if I was in print or online. The more amateur stuff out there, the more appealing will be the stuff by the pros because it will continue to stand out.